An amazing content marketing strategy can ensure that quality content is uploaded and shared regularly, but it doesn’t guarantee that your social media engagement will be high. Even the best articles, videos and informative content pieces can fall victim to low social engagement.
So how can you prevent this from happening and ensure that your content gets the likes, comments and shares that you’d like on your social media platforms? You need to make sure that your social media strategy works in tandem with your content strategy.
Not having a smart social strategy can actually damage your brand reputation. Low social media engagement could be indicative of this, and there are a few things that you may be doing wrong without knowing it.
Not giving the audience what they want
Social media provides brands with a free platform to reach a massive audience. Most social media users follow their favourite brands to stay up-to-date with the latest product releases and news. One of the main things followers look for is a real connection.
They like to hear a real person’s voice behind the posts, not some filtered robotic message. According to Sprout Social, 86% of consumers want honest behaviour from brands on Facebook, followed by friendly, helpful and funny posts.
This desire for honesty and realness is not only limited to social media interactions; consumers care about a brand’s stance on real issues and events. Brands may run far from political affiliations but the audience will always be interested in where a brand stands. Over 60% of consumers believe that it is important for brands to take a stand on political and social issues.
Your audience wants to hear your views because this makes your brand more personable and worth their time. Know your audience and what they want, and then give it to them through your social media channels.
Not making space for new users
With every generation that enters the social media pool, your audience becomes both older and younger at the same time. Your followers gradually become older but new, young or elderly users may start to follow your brand, and your social strategy should take this into consideration.
The percentage of adults who use social media is still growing and one of the most rapidly emerging age groups is the retirement age adult. People aged 65 and above are creating social media accounts yet they are rarely taken into consideration by brands.
Elderly social media users aren’t all that different from their younger counterparts – they still want personal connections and have a concern over the privacy of their information. You can appeal to retirees by using simple images, subtle colours and language that they’ll understand easily.
Hashtags are also a foreign concept to the elderly so keep these to a minimum or use them separately at the end of the post if you want to reach out to that generation. To make your posts engaging, sometimes you need to ensure that they are accessible and understandable to every follower.
Not creating enough video content
Eight out of ten social media users would rather share a video than a written article. This means that video content is a highly popular and shareable piece of content. Creating video content for your channels also doesn’t need to be expensive – you just need a smartphone and some editing savvy.
Even if you can’t produce your own videos, you should still try to include a link to a relevant video that will supplement your articles. Videos make your posts and brand more engaging and shareable.
Not fact-checking and proofreading your content
Social media users tend to be ruthless when it comes to incorrect facts and inaccuracies in your articles. Even spelling mistakes on posts will invite a wave of comments asking where your editor is. This type of engagement is not good.
Make sure you spend a bit of extra time carefully reading your content and social posts before going live. If needs be, hire a proficient freelance editor or proofreader to check the facts and grammar of your content. A second pair of eyes will often catch your mistakes. Alternatively, you can download Grammarly and it will find your spelling and grammar errors for you.
Your followers will definitely call you out on your mistakes, so proofreading, fact-checking, editing and re-editing is critical. Mistakes can damage your credibility as an expert, your brand reputation and your future engagement rate.
No engagement in dialogue with your followers
Brand reputation and social media interactions go hand-in-hand. Nothing infuriates users more than unresponsive brands on social media. If they take the time to interact and engage with your brand, you need to make sure that they get a response or are acknowledged in some way.
This doesn’t mean that you have to reply to every single one of your followers’ comments, but you do need to engage with the more serious ones. Having a single platform for all of your social media channels is advised; something like Hootsuite can be very useful for monitoring your mentions on all social platforms.
The more you engage with your audience, the more they’ll engage in return. Start chatting with your followers and building personable relationships. This will increase their loyalty to your brand and will be good for your website traffic too.
As we’ve seen, it can be easy to get your social media strategy wrong which will minimise your engagement. All the hard work and hours put into your website’s content can be pointless if nobody sees it or shares it on social media.
Keep an eye out for the above-mentioned mistakes and take the right actions to correct them. Be real, personable and engaging on social media and make use of video content more. Don’t forget to include your elderly audience in your campaigns, too. If you give your audience exactly what they want, your engagement will soar.
___
Discover the latest trends and tips that shape an ever-evolving digital world.
___
Mobimeme offers content marketing, SEO, analytics, social media management and expert direction in the digital sphere. Building and growing an online audience for your business is what we do best. Get in touch with us to find out more about our package offerings and how you can improve your website and following.
___
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Google+ for more articles, videos and content to keep you inspired.